What's the best iphone / ipad app for learning Chinese?

anyone have any suggestions on iphone/ipad apps to help in the learning process? am still a relative beginner so would be more basic sentence structure and vocab type exercises. I completely thought a year after release the ipad would be amazing me with interactive textbooks, etc.

Qingwen dictionary on the iphone is one i've found thats easy to use and helpful so far.

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I personally use DianHuadictionary's free iphone app every day for flashcards and great offline dictionary. You have to spend some time setting up vocabulary lists that match your book / daily life but it's great for flashcards after that.

One nice feature they have as an add-on is the optical character reading, video embed below. It seems really excellent but I can't get on my iphone (old iOS, don't ask) Would be really interested if anyone has used that for a few days & can provide feedback.

Is the Pleco OCR optical character recognizer add-on worth $14.99? I say yes. I got a new iphone & downloaded the OCR plug in and it works really well, just as good as the video above shows.

I think for homework alone, the Pleco OCR is worth it. It is sooo much faster just to use this to find that pesky character that you can't remember. I used to have to try & draw characters stroke by stroke to find it in the dictionary. This save so much time. I highly recommend it.

To get it, first download pleco here then click the wave thing bottom right & then click 'add-ons'. It's listed there as Optical Character Recognizer. Download the add-on & you're good to go.

Hello guys, I have Ipod Touch Ipad Android HTC and Pc, I know many programs for learning Chinese, the most complete is Pleco, it is the better for flashcard and dicts it has more than 6 dicts with phrase example and they are speaked from Male and Female voices, it also has an OCR scanner that permit to add a word by using the Iphone camera. You can also use it to read I used to import Txt chinese text and read it via Pleco, however the better apps for writing is http://www.Skritter.com it is on iphone & ipad.

I've used a few apps on the iPhone, Pleco and NCIKU are the dictionaries I use and they are both good at what they do. NCIKU also have a few extra books that you can download wrapped inside a reader to help make sense of them. (NCIKU reader) I also use Anki (not free) with flashcards for help with learning characters.

Recently released is an OCR reader from Tencent, the people behind QQ and it is called "QQ 慧眼". This is a free app, the Pleco version is $15.99 in Australia, although it is only in version 1. I haven't used the Pleco app and I would imagine the Tencent app isn't as good, but for a free app, it is very good.

Qingwen was my fav for a long time, but then i got an ipad and started using Pleco, which is a brilliant app.

eZiTest, (Ezi Test Chinese iPhone | Ezi Test Chinese iPad) is also really great, as it gives you multiple ways to study flash cards. I particularily like the 'scramble' game, which shows you a character along with multiples definitions to choose from and a countdown timer. The sooner you choose the correct answer, the more points you get, down to a minimum of 333 points for a correct answer. It gives you another score to try outdo yourself with, other than just the number of correct guesses and allows you study/play against others on the internet, using apples Game Centre. It's free and definitely worth checking out.

"Wenlin" is by far the best tool I've ever use to learn Chinese. Unlike other software, Wenlin takes a more proactive approach to flashcard style of learning. Most software are too passive providing you multiple choice answers that may easily be guest.Wenlin is a powerhouse contain dictionary, flashcard, and features that enhances learning. The Flashcard is great It get you involve and engage so learning come naturally. Combine the flashcard and the "instant definition" you'll "UNDERSTAND" not just memorize, 12 new words in one cycle. It's not the most "fun" of program, but fun resides in the mind. Your goal is to learn, you want fun, go watch a movie or something! They most likely would have it for the ipad.

Another idea beyond the flashcard approach is a program that teaches you how to read 2 character words. As mentioned in a previous discussion of mine about 有机 meaning 'organic', sometimes it's best to learn 2 character words as their own separate identities. For me at least, words like 中国 in my mind mean 'middle + country' and still don't make much sense unless I learn them as a whole.

I've used the one Nora has linked to and can confirm it's very good! Now I have an Android phone though, and the choices aren't nearly as varied! It has Pleco now which is good but does anyone know any good flashcard apps?

They have a few different apps, but I love the Chinese Writer (iphone | ipad). It lets you practice characters on your iPhone and it also has an addictive writing game. You get about 400 characters with the free app, You can add on HSK characters packs as you wish for a dollar a piece or buy all 14 at once for $10. (Thus far your can't add your own characters, but you get about 2,500 for the $10) You can also make your own character sets to practice. I have 17 different sets: Adjectives, Verbs, Cooking, Clothes, etc. I had been practicing writing all summer - at least an hour a day - but I really wasn't making much progress. I kept forgetting the old characters once I moved on to new ones. I got this app about a month ago and I'm able to practice more often and remember them better. It's made all the difference for me. If you try it out let me know what you think.